According to Wikipedia, “Total Quality Management (TQM) consists of organization-wide efforts to install and make a permanent climate in which an organization continuously improves its ability to deliver high-quality products and services to customers”.
In the 1940s, Japan had a bit of an issue regarding the quality of its products. Its products were often considered cheap or simple imitations of other products. In order to raise the quality of its products, some crazily smart people like Deming, Juran, and Feigenbaum were invited to help fix the problem. In the 1950s, quality control and management became hot topics in the management sectors in Japan.
Total Quality Management continued to be developed until the early 1980s, but by now it was not limited to Japan but also included Europe and America.
What I find interesting about the notion of quality management is that quality is seen as a notion not just from the point of view of the creator of the product. No, quality also depends on the point of view of the user of the product, the customer. Remember phenomenology?
With the focus on quality comes not only the point of view of the user but also the point of view of the workers. “Quality Circles were originally described by W. Edwards Deming in the 1950s, Deming praised Toyota as an example of the practice. The idea was later formalized across Japan in 1962 and expanded by others such as Kaoru Ishikawa.”.
Quality Circles are basically meetings where workers meet to find ways to make their workplace better, and then present their propositions to the management.
Here, we again come across this notion of co-creation that is so important for Service Designers. Indeed, this aspect of co-creation is important not only for the company but also for the well-being of the workers. In their “History of Quality”, the authors of “Business Performance Improvement Resources” say it in this manner: “A by-product of quality circles was employee motivation. Workers felt that they were involved and heard”.
Going further
This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.